@tempestuous
I have HP tx1000 laptop. It has the broadcomm bcm43xx wifi chip.
Wireless works with the retro kernel.
I loaded regular Puppy 4.1.2 and tried to use the wl driver per your instructions.
Downloaded broadcom-5.10.27.14-k2.6.25.16.pet
rebooted and B43 identifies wlan0 but won't connect.
Checked bootkernel.log and found these lines towars the end of the log:

It wants to load wl but it's "tainted" so falls back to B43xx driver, which gives the old warning messages about updating the firmware.
I tried that before but you've pointed out that it is futile.
Can you assist in any way so that I can get wireless working in 4.1.2?
Thanks,
B._________________Laptop: Acer Aspire 5810TZ

@Tempestuous
Thanks for your swift reply.
I tried your recommendations,maade the changes in the preferences file, installed the ,pet and had the same result as before.
Looking at the quoted text in my previous post it first tries to load WL but complains it is tainted.

Is this the bcm43xx driver or the b43 driver?
I tried all of the available Broadcom drivers in the connect wizard and the only one to create a wlan0 interface was b43, but of course it doesn't have the correct firmware. WL came up as "not found"when I tried to load it.
Next line is

Quote:

b43-phy0 ERROR: Firmware file "b43/ucode5.fw" not found or load failed.

I looked in /lib/firmware after runnig your .pet and there is no b43 folder there.
I checked by looking inside the .pet that you recommended and it does not have that structure either, but loads files directly to the /lib/firmware folder.
I tried ndiswrapper too, but I got "invalid driver" when I pointed to the BCMWL5.inf file from XP.

"tainted" can simply mean that the driver is totally incompatible, and it cannot complete the load process.
Or it could mean that the driver was compiled under a different kernel ... I hope you're definitely using the official release of Puppy 4.20 ... not the unofficial SMP kernel?

Barburo wrote:

I tried all of the available Broadcom drivers in the connect wizard and the only one to create a wlan0 interface was b43

Ah, that's a good start. You didn't mention this important information before.
I've been told that firmware fails to automatically decompress in Puppy 4.2 (groan, another problem with 4.2) so the error message about wrong firmware may, in fact, relate to absent firmware.
So let's get the firmware decompressed and ready. Do this -

Code:

cd /lib/modules/all-firmware
tar -zxvf b43.tar.gz
cp -a b43/* /

The correct firmware for the b43 driver should now be in /lib/firmware/b43
(the older bcm43xx firmware is located at /lib/firmware)

Now let's get your modules preference configuration back to the correct default state. Go to -
Menu >
System >
BootManager configure bootup >
Give preference to one module over another:

Here is the correct configuration -

Code:

bcm43xx:ssb
wl:ssb

Reboot and you should be ready to load the b43 driver in the Network Wizard.

Thanks Tempestuous for pointing me in the right direction.
I got connected in 4.1.2 (that's the 2.6.26. kernel I believe) as soon as I copied the B43 library to firmware.
I tried the same B43 lib with the 2.6.28 SMP kernel that unnamed pup and Lighthouse RC2 are using but it failed (only just though). As you pointed out

Quote:

... I hope you're definitely using the official release of Puppy 4.20 ... not the unofficial SMP kernel?

the B43 firmware probably needs compiling against that kernel for wireless to work on my tx1000.

I visited the Broadcom website and read their instructions.
I find the "make" command doesn't work on my puppies (--> because it probably needs a development environment?).
Any information about how I can proceed to get these B43 libraries compiled for 2.6.28 ?
B._________________Laptop: Acer Aspire 5810TZ

Great. That confirms that the b43 driver works ...
but clearly some or all of the Puppy 4.1/4.2 versions fail to decompress the b43 firmware as they should.

Barburo wrote:

I got connected in 4.1.2 (that's the 2.6.26. kernel I believe)

No. Like all official 4.1 and 4.2 releases it has kernel 2.6.25.16.

Barburo wrote:

the B43 firmware probably needs compiling against that kernel for wireless to work on my tx1000.

No. firmware is just a binary chunk of code.
If the b43 driver undergoes any significant change in the future then yes, updated firmware will likely be required. But the latest version of b43 firmware is compatible with all kernels from 2.6.25 to the latest 2.6.29. And this is what Puppy includes. It's from
http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43#devicefirmware

When you copy the firmware from Puppy 4.2 across to BoxPup make sure you locate it at /lib/firmware/b43

My concerns about kernel version related only to the proprietary wl Broadcom driver, since I compiled this driver specifically for k2.6.25.16, non-SMP. This driver has its firmware built-in.
DON'T attempt to obtain firmware from the Broadcom site. Broadcom do not provide the opensource b43 driver, and their firmware should only be used after the b43 developers have tested it.

@Tempestuous
Thanks for your patience and commitment to helping us Puppy users
After spending many hours in fruitless experimentation I can now get wifi connected in 4.1.2 plus later variants.

When I can't get things to work it's usually operator error, or some other dumb mistake. This time all that was needed to make the Broadcom chip work in my HP Tx1000 was the correct set of b43 firmware files which you pointed me at.

Hello
I use Puppy 4.1.2 (barebone) on computer with hardware watchdog which I have to use (for some project). Computer is based on intel 915 chipset and probably iTCO_wdt driver should work. I had also Ubuntu 9.04 installed on another computer and it has /lib/modules/2.6.28-11-generic/kernel/drivers/watchdog directory with all drivers, but on Puppy there is no even softdog driver... Is there any way to add these drivers to Puppy?
Thank you in advance.

Yes, but of course there are other steps, too. When you run "make menuconfig" you are presented with the kernel configuration as defined by the Puppy configuration file. Obviously you need to change this configuration, specifically at -

Device Drivers > Watchdog Timer Support > Intel TCO Timer/Watchdog

After "make bzImage" you will need to rename the new kernel image "vmlinuz", and boot to this new kernel instead of the existing one.

Since this new kernel will be very similar to the existing kernel (just one extra feature enabled) you could probably get away with not compiling all the modules ... but of course, you still need to generate the iTCO_wdt module, so you will need to do the whole "make modules" process just for this module.

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